Does Euro-English exist?

Question

There is debate on the existence of this variety within the expanding circle, I think it exists in as much as we can categorise other varieties (i.e. Singlish falls under the 'Asian-English' label).

I'm searching for examples to support/refute the idea of 'Euro-English', I've investigated countability but I'm in search of more data.

Could anyone provide any examples of other morphological, grammatical or lexical features which are unique to varieties of English within Europe? Or point me to a corpus/journals which have this data.

Or does it not exist, could you point me towards academic literature which refutes its existence?

Answer 1

Yes.

There are words and phrases like “water with gas” or “canalisation” that occur in English between native speakers of languages like German and Italian that are rarely if ever heard from native English speakers in these senses.

The basic principle here is that continental European languages have a lot in common, even across language families. This is especially true within regions.

I would argue that European English even occurs between continental Europeans in countries where English is spoken.

Conversely, there are many phrases used by native English speakers that most non-native speakers do not utter, or even understand.

And plenty of overlap.

Answer 2

The question being asked can't be scientifically researched until it is pinned down – what is supposed "Euro-English"? I think England is in Europe (still), so the myriad varieties of English of England might seem to be "Euro-English", and likewise Irish, Welsh and Scottish varieties. To rule out that obvious class of dialects, I assume you mean "varieties without native speakers" – stepping out of Europe for a moment, East African and Indian English would thus be outside of the scope of the question.

We can also ask if "UK English" exists (or if "English English" exists); that presumably would mean "Is there a set of features that identify what is common to all speakers in England, or in the UK". The set of features is somewhat small; but to quality as UK English, it ought to exclude features found in other regional Englishes, such as "American" English, Canadian English, Australian English and so on. That is, we need something that makes the language specifically "European", meaning that you are only looking for features of the European dialect – a common set of features shared by non-native speakers of Europe, but not more general (e.g. clausal negation is done with the word "not", the integer that precedes "two" is "one").

This brings us to a possible scientific question: are there any features that exist in the non-native varieties of Europe and are exclusive to that variety? I expect that this question is answered in the negative. First, the dialectal unity of European English is questionable, as is the unity of UK English. Second, the geographical exclusivity of those features compared to other planetary zones is highly unlikely. It is most likely that any entity "Euro-English" would have to be defined with some form of UK English as the standard. And thus the question devolves to the squabble between Mollin and Modiano – there is no testable (refutable) scientific hypothesis on offer.

Rather than asking whether Euro-English exists, you can simply assume that it exists and then ask what properties it has. Those properties may be shared with other dialects of English.

Answer 3

I am chiming here as a guest.

I'm not linguist but I am a native English speaker from the UK who has lived in continental Europe for nearly 30 years.

I take European English to be a variant of English that is spoken in continental Europe by non-native English speakers. Typically as a second language currently

I live in Brussels but I do not work for the commission but I instead in large multi national companies whose workforce is predominantly Belgian, most of them use English to bridge the gap between Dutch and French or communicate with other language speakers in the office.

The Belgium use of English is heavily influenced by French, and Dutch, and German, and many other languages, which creates words and phrases that are meaningless to an native English speaker, could be nonsensical, mean the opposite, or are completely misleading to a native speaker.

It is a minefield for a native English speaker and most of the time I don't know what they are saying or what they are asking of me, and when I think I do it turns out they're being something completely different. This comes from people learning English on the job, with very little exposure to later speakers. I have lost jobs so for it because I don't understand what my bosses said or have misunderstood them.

Working for the European commission is much better because they tend to have actually been taught proper English, but once you are outside of this area it becomes a minefield. An exception would be the Netherlands where people speak an excellent level of English.

A manager asked me to report the project, so I go and create a report on the project based on what information I thought they wanted. However, what they really meant was that they wanted me to postpone the project to later date. To report in French means to postpone. However, some of them use "to report" correctly, but I never know which person is using the English version of report or the French version.

Imagine a paragraph of words that have completely different meaning in for a native English speaker compared to that of a European-English speaker. It is a recipe for disaster, and has caused many.

Luckily, the Commission has publisher document about this, but unfortunately nobody read it.

https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2016-12/clear_writing_tips_en.pdf

In my opinion, English use is a non-standard mess in continental Europe that is causing communication problems because people are learning it badly. but this is how languages evolve, and I hope there's 100 years from now we will be speaking a mutually intelligible version, unless somebody does the English version of report when asked to report the missile attack.

Regards, Mrs PullingHerHairOut!

Answer 4

I think your idea of "euro-English" is nothing more than Globish. Here are a couple of books, that might help you.

Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language TIMOTHY FARRINGTON

The History of English DAVID GRAMLEY

The Stories of English DAVID CRYSTAL

Each of these books treat the subject of world variants of English.